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On Co- operation of Museums with Private Collectors in WesternUkraine

Roman Chmelyk, Lviv/ Ukraine

Private collections in Ukraine have a long- lived history. InUkraine, like in the whole world, they preceded the set- up of statemuseums. Moreover, it is the private collections that made up thebasis of the future national collections.

After the Second World War the Soviet regime destroyed pri-vate collections in Western Ukraine as a cultural phenomenon. Aprivate collector was considered a state enemy. Everything was sup-posed to be common, that is, to belong to The People, which eventu-ally meant to belong to nobody. The majority of private collectionswas nationalized and intentionally" dispersed" among different mu-seums. Some collections were robbed, some masterpieces were sto-len, some were destroyed and some of them disappeared and cannotbe traced until now. At the end of the 40s and the beginning of the50s the museum system was reorganized: some museums wereclosed, and others were united. Unique collections were broken intoparts and distributed among different museums, sometimes in differ-ent cities. It made a mess and complicated the control of the exhibitspossessed.

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The 50s 60s were the most difficult time for the cultural lifeof Western Ukraine. The Soviet power started a wide action aimed atdestroying masterpieces, which were qualified as carriers of thebourgeois- nationalistic ideology. The so- called" cleanings- up" weredone in the museums, libraries and archives. For example, such" cleanings- up" were done in the National Museum in Lviv, Lvivscientific library named after Stefanyk, the Museum of Local Lore,History and Economy in Ivano- Frankivsk etc. Religious symbols,namely those of Christianity, were destroyed too. Many cathedralsand churches were robbed.

As a response to the communist terror, some intellectualsstarted to search for and to collect and save the reliquies of Christianand national culture. It might sound paradox, but private collections